State editorial roundup

The Associated Press

Published 6:00 pm, Sunday, March 27, 2005

By The Associated Press

A sampling of editorial opinion around Texas:

___

March 28

The Dallas Morning News on U.S. debt:

These days, business leaders are more jittery about the national debt than the next terrorist strike. That is, they see the United States' inability to balance its budget as a greater threat to the economy.

That's saying a lot. Everyone knows the devastation of the Sept. 11 attacks and how, for instance, the airline industry barely hung on afterward.

While previous polls showed terror worries trumping the deficit, the recent National Association for Business Economics survey of 172 leaders indicates that 27 percent of them worry more about the deficit's impact on economic growth than another al-Qaeda strike. Only 24 percent said they worried more about terrorism than the deficit. While the numbers are still close, they do reflect shifting concerns.

The deficit worriers are specific, too. The aging of America's population makes them tremble. As Americans live longer, Washington will have to hand out even greater amounts of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid unless Congress puts reasonable limits on what these entitlement programs can do.

Best we can tell, not many in Washington are listening to the deficit crowd. Before the House and Senate left for Easter recess, the Republican-led chambers passed budget blueprints that would increase the deficit over the next five years by more than $100 billion.

Here's one change that would help: Legislators should be forced to show how they would pay for a spending hike or a tax cut. Congress had "pay-as-you-go" rules under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Those guidelines helped balance the budget, but some House conservatives don't want to apply them today to tax cuts.

We hope leaders in both chambers correct this deficiency when lawmakers return to work on April 5. It's not just business executives who are worried that our debt has run amok. We all share their pain.

___

March 27

Houston Chronicle on legislative and judicial roles:

In June 2003, Robert A. Caro wrote to U.S. Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee. Several senators had asked Caro, author of the acclaimed and scholarly three-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, for his thoughts on the Senate's role with respect to President Bush's judicial nominations.

Caro reminded the senators that extended debate the filibuster had been used to prolong some of the nation's most ignoble causes, such as racial segregation. But he cautioned the senators against changing the rules.

The Founders, he said, meant the Senate to be a deliberative body, one strong enough to resist a popular president when any of its members thought it their duty to do so. The Senate's constitutional role of resisting presidential authority and impetuous tides of popular passion would be ended if a simple majority could end debate even before it had begun.

Frustrated that Democratic senators have used extended debate to reject seven of Bush's judicial nominees, some Republican senators want to implement what has come to be known as the nuclear option: allowing 51 senators (or 50 senators and the vice president) to end debate on judicial nominees. They wish to forget that Republicans held up or rejected confirmation of an even greater number of President Clinton's judicial nominees. Triumphant after the last election and controlling the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, some members of the ruling party cannot imagine the day when they will return to the minority.

At crucial times in the past, senators of the ruling party have joined the minority to protect the Senate's independence from the White House and to defend the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. It is hard to imagine that happening with any frequency today. Partisan power has become paramount, and the president can easily find 51 partisans eager to confirm any judicial nominee, no matter how far from the mainstream or how unqualified for lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

One such nomination Democrats thwarted last term was that of Texas Supreme Court Justice Patricia Owen. Albert Gonzales, the U.S. attorney general and for years President Bush's lawyer, once served with Owen on the Texas high court. While on the court, Gonzales wrote an opinion criticizing Owen's minority dissent as "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" the very thing President Bush says he abhors in a judge. Typical of the imperatives of party loyalty, Gonzales supports Owen's nomination to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Bush says he wants his nominees to just follow the law, but one nominee has been reversed by the conservative Fourth Circuit more than 150 times. Either the nominee doesn't know the law, or he chooses to ignore it.

Conservative lawyers and jurists who could easily win confirmation are plentiful. Republicans should resist making the Senate a rubber stamp in order to curry favor with ideological segments of the party's base.

___

March 28

San Antonio Express News on foreigners' rights:

When foreigners enter the United States, they should not have to leave their civil rights at the checkpoint.

That has occurred in the past, but a Texas bill would guarantee it never happens again.

Voting 5-0 on Wednesday, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved the bill, which is designed to allow foreign citizens to notify their consular offices when they are arrested or detained.

The controversy surfaced earlier this month, when President Bush filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, instructing states to grant new hearings to Mexican citizens on death row.

The president did the right thing then, and the state will be doing the right thing if the bill passes, making the proper representation a legal requirement.

Of the 51 Mexican nationals facing execution in this country, 15 are in Texas.

When arrested for a heinous crime, every individual should have the right to seek counsel from an official from his or her homeland. Their place of birth should never be allowed to impede justice.

___

March 28 Austin American-Statesman on Patriot Act:

An unusual coalition of liberals and conservatives has formed to try to force Congress to make changes in the controversial USA Patriot Act.

Hearings begin next month on the act, which was overwhelmingly passed following the 9/11 terror attacks and expanded the government's powers to spy on and prosecute suspected terrorists. Parts of the Patriot Act will expire at the end of the year unless Congress specifically renews them.

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and others want the act to remain as it is and be made permanent. But critics on the political right and left think some sections of the act can lead to government overreaching and abuse.

While most of the act was a necessary updating of law enforcement tools and methods, several sections went too far and intrude on civil liberties. Congress should repeal, or let expire, the most egregious sections of the law, and not make the act permanent but require a review every five years as it does now.

Sections that are most opposed by the bipartisan coalition include the provision that allows federal law enforcement to conduct "sneak and peek" searches without the knowledge of the property owner or resident; the power to secretly obtain business, medical, financial, library and other records; and the act's definition of terrorism, which many liberals and conservatives find too broad.

These are the three sections that have long bothered critics on the left. Now they concern those on the right, which makes the coalition opposing them quite formidable. The Republicans who run the administration and Congress can't brand opponents as liberals and refuse to debate the act's merits.

Defenders of the Patriot Act, including Gonzales and Cornyn, say it is a necessary tool to fight terror. They have said repeatedly that there are no verified civil liberties violations under the act. But critics, including conservative Republican and former congressman Robert Barr, point out that so much secrecy surrounds the act that no one can know for sure what violations might have occurred.

Another, stronger argument is that the lack of abuse so far doesn't preclude it in the future. Secretly obtaining records and sneaking onto property without giving residents a warrant is a ripe field for abuse by an overzealous prosecutor.

Conservatives are also worried that the broad definition of terrorism under the act as it is written can be applied to other groups, such as anti-abortion demonstrators.

Much of the Patriot Act is acceptable as a federal law enforcement tool and a necessary change in the law to keep up with technology advances. The three sections targeted by opponents are a small part of a huge law.

Congress should not hesitate to repeal those provisions and rewrite the law to make it less offensive. It says something that knowledgeable people on the right and left find a law dangerous and offensive. Congress should listen on this one when hearings begin in the Senate.

___

March 26

The Victoria Advocate on Texas gubernatorial candidacy prospects:

Gov. Rick Perry does not want U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to challenge him in next year's Republican gubernatorial primary.

To dissuade her from doing so, to frighten her off, his campaign is already trying to defame the popular senator's reputation to convince Texas Republicans that she is not conservative enough for the state.

This despite the fact that Hutchison has won four statewide elections, in 1990 as state treasurer and in 1993, 1994 and 2000 as U.S. senator. In that last election, she won with more than 4 million votes, the highest tally any statewide candidate has garnered in Texas history. That is not something a liberal could do in Texas these days.

So the Perry campaign produced and distributed a video of Hutchison appearing at a recent Washington, D.C., event highlighting historic preservation - hardly a conservative vs. liberal or a Republican vs. Democratic issue - with U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

"In the 46-second video, circulating rapidly by e-mail among conservative activists, Clinton tells audience members she's 'delighted that Kay is my partner on so many important fronts.' The senators pose, smiling, and lightly embrace twice," The Associated Press reported.

Not so different from how President Ronald Reagan, a conservative California Republican, and U.S. House Speaker Tip O'Neill, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, used to get together to socialize after work, although without the embracing. As, before them, did President John F. Kennedy, a liberal Massachusetts Democrat, and U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, a conservative Arizona Republican.

Time was, politics was not so personally nasty. Back then, elected officials could leave their partisan differences at the office. Back then, working to find common cause with members of the other party for the good of the nation was seen as a virtue, not demonized.

Would that it still were. The nation would be better off for it.

Perry campaign director Luis Saenz acknowledged that the governor's re-election effort is responsible for the video and, with it, the attempted character assassination by association.

"We're being very aggressive in everything we do," Saenz told the Austin American-Statesman. "And you ain't seen nothing yet."

Not all of Perry's supporters were offended by the joint appearance of Hutchison and Clinton or that they sometimes can work together.

"It's just a mutual respect for holding the same office," Kathy Haigler, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee from Houston, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Even sometimes Republicans and Democrats find something worthy of joining together for."

That is the right attitude. That is good for Texas. Too bad the governor and his campaign staff do not share it.

Unlike too many of her congressional colleagues today, Hutchison has a long record of reaching across the partisan aisle to work with members of the other party for the good of Texas.

In earlier rounds of military base closings, for example, her closest ally in her efforts to protect Texas installations was U.S. Rep. Frank Tejeda, D-San Antonio.

Does that make her a less conservative or less Republican senator?

Not at all. It makes her a more effective one for the state - and all of its residents - she represents.

Elected officials from both parties should always be looking for ways to work together.

Hutchison's work with Clinton - demonized by conservatives more for her earlier positions as first lady than her subsequent service in the Senate - on historic preservation is a good example of how to do that. And it is glaringly nonpartisan.

Attacking Hutchison for this is the cheapest kind of shot that has nothing to do with anything that matters to Texas and its future.

If Perry "worried more about taking care of the school finance problem and a little less about who Sen. Hutchison stands on the stage with, Texas would be a lot better off," Terry Sullivan, Hutchison's campaign manager, told the Fort Worth newspaper.

Hard to disagree with that.

Attacking Hutchison - a remarkably effective senator - is not going to make Perry - an incurably lackluster governor - any more effective.

Now Playing:

All it will do is distract from real issues and make it so much more difficult for the state's elected leaders to do what is good for Texas and all Texans.